404 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



220 kegs — in the short space of an hour and 

 a quarter. It was this same Harry who had 

 the reputation of doing about four men's work 

 in a day. He was young, active, lithe, and in 

 the very pink of health. Besides making some 

 big records in bicycle-riding he climbed the 

 Ithaca Hills — something that I believe no man 

 besides himself ever did, without dismount- 

 ing. Well, this same Harry went to Cuba, 

 and in going over the island to look up loca- 

 tions he used, of course, his ever faithful steed 

 the wheel. I have just received a letter from 

 him, and from it I make a short extract which 

 is full of warning to other young ambitious 

 boys who sometimes overestimate their physi- 

 cal strength. Harry writes : 



I have been sick for some time, and unable to attend 

 to business. I am at present in one of the United 

 States military hospitals. This will explain why I 

 have not ordered those hives. My trouble came from 

 too much bicycle, etc. It is a form of heart trouble. 

 The doctors have not decided yet how I am to come 

 out. 



This tells its own story, and carries its own 

 lesson. 



It is said that confession is good for the 

 soul ; and I do not know but I had better tell 

 a little of my history. Our older readers will 

 remember how, when the bicycle first came 

 out, I used to make long runs over the coun- 

 try, visiting bee-keepers, and how sometimes 

 I would ride over a century at a run, one time 

 making a run of 115 miles in 8}4 hours, 80 

 miles in one afternoon, and again making 20 

 miles in 70 minutes, and this over common 

 roads. While this time has been beaten re- 

 peatedly bj' two or three hours for the century 

 by men who are trained up to it, yet I found 

 it is very seldom that one who makes it a busi- 

 ness to sit at his desk is /ool enough to try to 

 ride such distances in such time. Candidly, I 

 should much prefer to brag about big records 

 than to confess to being a "fool." That 

 seems like a strong term, but I use it advised- 

 ly, as the reader will see by what follows. 



Soon after making some of those century 

 runs among bee-keepers, and after I had re- 

 turned home, for weeks I could not sleep 

 nights, and the following spring found me 

 breaking down with nervous prostration. My 

 friends sympathetically hinted about my hav- 

 ing "worked too hard." Yes, I /lad over- 

 worked on the bicycle, but not at my desk. 

 But this was not all. I was under the doctor's 

 care for a year. I kept running down in weight 

 until I ran down to 115 lbs., and my normal 

 weight was 140. I remember one good friend 

 of mine (I had just started on the beef diet) 

 chokingly (not jokingly) saying, "Why, my 

 dear man, you have one foot in the grave al- 

 ready, and you will die, sure." But I had a 

 conviction all the time that I was " going to 

 pull through." I had faith in beef and hot 

 water to undo even excesses on the bicycle. I 

 hung to the treatment ; and by the advice of 

 my physician, Dr. J. M. Lewis, of Cleveland, 

 I rode the wheel some two or three miles a 

 day — just enough to keep up a very light ex- 

 ercise ; delegated my office work to others, 

 and took things as easy as I could. In a few 

 months' time I began to mend, and kept on 

 mending, and putting on flesh, until I reached 



155 pounds. I went off the diet gradually, 

 and have been comparatively well ever since. 



Right in this connection are two morals. 

 One is, do not overdo on the bicycle. Second, 

 when you get sick, and your friends begin to 

 talk about your crawling into the grave, go on 

 to the beef diet. 



Perhaps the kind reader who has taken my 

 advice on bee-matters wonders zv/iy it was that 

 I rode to excess. Those of you who have nev- 

 er had any experience in the exhilaration of 

 "second wind" know nothing of it. This 

 new strength, or new something, comes on 

 something like this: One starts off in the 

 morning, perhaps for a hundred-mile ride. He 

 may feel tired. He is weary of legs, and out 

 of breath ; but he keeps on, for by past expe- 

 rience he knows if he persists the so-called 

 second wind will come. He begins to ex- 

 perience a feeling of exhilaration. This is 

 soon followed by a buoyancy like unto fly- 

 ing, for the wheel shoots ahead as if on wings. 

 Hills and rough roads seem not to be in the 

 way. There is no labored breathing, and the 

 bicycle really seems as if it were propelled 

 by a motor.* I thought that, as long as I 

 felt like this, could eat well, and could ride 

 without fatigue, even at the rate of eighteen 

 miles an hour, as I have done on some of my 

 long rides, where the roads were good, I was 

 perfectly safe. Indeed, on one of my last cen- 

 tury runs I came into Medina on the bicycle 

 at a fifteen-mile gait. I felt so well that I ran 

 up the stairway to the office two steps at a 

 jump. So deceptive was that second-wind 

 sensation that I was prepared to do almost 

 any thing in the way of athletics — at least I 

 thought I was. 



While I was never intoxicated, in the accept- 

 ed sense of the word, yet I believe when one gets 

 what he calls real second wind he feels as if he 

 could almost fly. It is this sensation of buoy- 

 ancy and strength that leads many a rider on 

 his bicycle to feel perfectly safe. Why, as 

 long as he is not tired, and can outrun any one 

 without fatigue, or without getting out of 

 breath — he's all right. There never was a 

 bigger mistake. 



Now, in confessing my part of plaj-ing the 

 " fool " I do not mean to implicate Harry in 

 the same way ; and yet he Diay have fallen 

 into the same error I did — overestimating his 

 strength by the way he felt. 



* A teacher of athletics told me that the weariness 

 comes about because the heart is not yet tuned up to 

 the higher pitch. Continued labor calls for extra ef- 

 fort on the part of the vital organ ; finally it yields to 

 the pressure, and beats faster and harder. This, I 

 was told, is a provision of nature to enable man or 

 beast to perform more arduous physical labor than is 

 his wont. This tuned-up condition of the system, or 

 second wind, as we familiarly call it, if rightly and 

 temperately used, is a good thing ; but one needs to 

 kn w when he has reached the danger-limit, and not 

 think within himself, becau.se he is not tired or out of 

 breath, that therefore he can go on in the same foolish 

 way. 



Did you know that the Brosins pure-food 

 bill is up for considetation f If you are a 

 bee-keeper, and interested in pure food and the 

 suppression of adulteration, write to your Con- 

 gressmen at once, urging thetn to support it. 



